Social RoboticsChildren credit Alexa with a mind, but say mistreating any home tech is wrong
Duke psychologists probe how kids think about talking and non-talking devices.
Duke University researchers asked 127 children aged four to eleven at a science museum about Amazon's Alexa and a Roomba vacuum after showing them short clips of each. The children attributed more thinking and feeling to Alexa than to the Roomba, apparently because it talks, though they did not think either could feel physical pain. Across ages they said yelling at or hitting the devices was wrong, though older children were somewhat more relaxed about it. Published in Developmental Psychology, the study informs debates on how conversational machines shape children's moral intuitions.
Source: EurekAlert!
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